


You and Me and the End of the World

by CirrusGrey



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Conversations, Episode Related, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Suicide mention, episode 199 spoilers, heavier on the angst, in which Martin psychoanalyzes his boyfriend, rating is for for swears and heavy themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 12:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30139353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CirrusGrey/pseuds/CirrusGrey
Summary: SPOILERS FOR MAG 199!!!A conversation about culpability, and love.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 28
Kudos: 118





	You and Me and the End of the World

Jon is laying next to him in the dimness of the tunnels, flat on his back, though if he is staring at the ceiling or fast asleep Martin cannot tell. It's hard, these days, to know.

Either way, Martin is staring at him in turn, silently, sorrowfully, nearly drowning under the weight of the immense grief he feels for all Jon has been through. He wishes he could make him understand that everything that has happened is not his fault, but he knows nothing he says will break past the thick veil of guilt Jon has cloaked himself in - for what has happened to the world, and for what he fears they will inflict on all the others. He wishes he could make him believe that this plan is a real way out, wishes he could get him to focus on the one world they know they can save, rather than the infinite hypothetical others that they might be harming in its place. Wishes, with a fervor that makes his heart burn in his chest, that Jon would allow himself to cry for more than a few moments, that he didn't believe it was selfish to do so, that he would allow himself the indulgence of grief.

"Martin," Jon says softly, and Martin blinks and looks away. Awake, then.

"Yeah?"

Jon takes a long, slow breath before speaking, considering his words carefully. "You... you don't have to be the one to kill Jonah, you know. I can- I'd be able to hold out against the Eye, I think. If this is just.... If you think you need to share in the guilt of the decision, spare me from making the final blow, you.... You don't have to get blood on your hands for my sake. Mine are already stained enough for the both of us."

Martin frowns at the ceiling. "Jon, this isn't- I'm serious that I think you'd be in danger if you killed him. I'm not trying to- to spare you, or anything. I've got blood on my hands too, from pushing you into the whole 'Kill Bill' thing." He frowns harder. "Besides, I  _ want  _ to be the one holding the knife. You're not the only one feeling guilty for his choices." The last words are spoken in a sullen mutter.

Jon pauses a moment; reaches over and grabs Martin's hand. "If you'd killed him when Peter told you to, everyone in the Institute would have died-"

"The  _ world  _ would have survi-" Martin interrupts, but Jon continues, speaking over him.

"-And you would have been gone."

Martin stops, mouth hanging open, and then closes it and purses his lips.

"I thought the fate of one man wasn't worth dooming the world over."

Jon shifts uncomfortably next to him, but doesn't reply.

"Anyway," Martin says after a moment. "Either way it doesn't change things. It's safer for me to kill him, and that's all there is to it."

"Right," Jon murmurs, and Martin takes advantage of their joined hands to bring Jon's up to his face and press a kiss to the back of it.

"Right," he echoes, and for a few moments he thinks that's the end of it. Then:

"I... I don't..." Jon says, softly, his voice barely more than a whisper. "I don't know if I can live with the guilt over what I've done... what we're about to do."

Martin clenches his jaw, hard. "Tough," he says, the word coming out harsher than he intends it. "Because your only other choice is to die with it. And I'm not going to let that happen."

"Martin..."

"Jon," Martin says, and makes a conscious effort to smooth out the edges in his voice. "Please. I understand, I promise, I..." He takes a deep breath; steels himself for the next words. "You're suicidal. I get it, I really do, I've  _ been  _ there, and it- I know it feels like there's no way out. Like- like you'll never recover from this, like you'll never be happy again. Like you'll never be  _ allowed  _ to be happy again. But take it from me, you will." Martin nods to himself, sure and certain. "It's not easy, and it's never going to be perfect, but it  _ does  _ get better. It's a cliché but- it did for me. And it will for you. You just need to be alive to see it."

Jon is silent for a long, long moment, and Martin waits, heart aching. He hates that Jon is in pain, hates that their plan is going to make it worse, hates that there's no easy solution that will fix all their problems and absolve Jon from the crushing guilt he feels too - but he refuses to let Jon throw his life away because of it, refuses to let him shatter their chance at a future because he can't see past the despair of the present.

His thoughts are interrupted by a choked noise from beside him, and he looks over, eyes wide, to see tears in Jon's eyes again.

"I can't," he says, shaking his head. "I can't, Martin, I can't put someone else through this, I can't let someone else suffer what I've-"

He reaches over, working one arm underneath Jon and using the other to grab him around the middle, and flips him so that he is lying on Martin's chest, Martin's arms wrapped around his back to hold him close.

"It's okay, it's  _ okay, _ Jon," he whispers. "You're  _ not, _ you're not doing anything to anyone." Jon just twists his hands into the front of Martin's shirt, curling into him as though he is the only solid point in a storm-tossed sea. "Look," he tries. "Sending the Fears away... you're not subjecting someone to the same fate Jonah - and the Web - put you through. You're not.  _ If  _ something bad happens in another world, and that is a very big  _ if, _ then it's not your fault. It's the fault of whoever does the bad thing. All you're doing is saving  _ this  _ world, and- and saving yourself, too. And there's nothing wrong with that. I know you don't believe me, but it's the truth. You're allowed to save yourself." He so, so desperately wishes Jon would believe him, but the only reply he receives is a miserable sniffle.

"I'm sorry we took the choice away from you," Martin continues after a moment. "I know none of us were really listening to you earlier, and that's... that's kind of shitty of us. Even if we meant well."

This, at last, has Jon shaking his head. "No," he says. "You gave my arguments a fair consideration and came to a different conclusion than me. That's not taking the choice away from me, that's just... democracy." He plays with a button on Martin's shirt for a moment, twisting it beneath his fingers. "And it's not that I don't  _ want  _ to save this world, I just..."

"Don't want any others to suffer in its place."

"Yes."

"And you feel guilty."

"Yes." This time, the word comes out heavy.

"And you think that you deserve to suffer for it," Martin adds, going out on a limb, but he's almost certain that this limb will hold. "You think it's...  _ just, _ that you should suffer alongside whatever world gets doomed - this one, in this case - that you should be forced to feel the pain everyone else is feeling. You think it's somehow more morally acceptable than being free, than having a chance at happiness while some hypothetical other person suffers in your place."

Jon is silent for a long, long moment, and when he speaks, his words are undercut with forced levity. "And here I thought you  _ didn't  _ have a master's in psychology."

"Parapsychology, actually," Martin says, a faint half-smile tugging at his lips. "Am I wrong?"

Jon just sighs. "I'll go with the group, Martin. Even though I don't agree with the decision you all made, I... I'll respect it."

"Thank you," Martin says, though Jon has not answered his question. If they succeed in their plans, they will have years ahead of them in which Jon can go to an  _ actual  _ therapist and hopefully find a way to live with everything he has been put through; and if they don't, well, as Melanie said... it won't really matter, either way.

The silence stretches on. Martin relaxes back into the blankets they have spread out on the tunnel floor as a makeshift bed, and feels Jon grow gradually heavier on top of him as the tension from their conversation bleeds out of him.

Just as Martin's eyes are starting to drift shut, sleep beginning to creep over him, Jon speaks again, low and contemplative.

"I could have fallen for you, you know."

"Hm?" Martin hums, confused, because he's got rather a lot of proof by now that Jon  _ did  _ fall for him.

"What you said, earlier," Jon explains. "That we wouldn't be together if things had been different. I don't believe that."

"Oh." Martin huffs a laugh. He hadn't expected Jon to still be thinking about that. "I mean, I guess? It'd be nice to think we could have been. Don't see how, though."

Jon pauses for a moment. His next words come out slightly sharp, stung by the implication. "You're so sure you wouldn't have fallen for me if it weren't for the trauma bonding?"

Martin snorts. "Please. I wanted do ask you out by the time Prentiss attacked the Institute." Jon makes a soft, surprised  _ oh  _ sound, and he smiles. "Need I remind you that  _ you  _ hated  _ me?" _

"I didn't-"

"Jon." Martin says, and Jon stops. "'I'm going to peel him'?"

He winces. "You heard that one too, did you?"

"Oh yeah. You're very colorful when you hate someone."

"I didn't hate  _ you," _ Jon insists, and Martin is endeared that he is so determined to rewrite their history. "I just... I hated having you as my  _ assistant." _

He raises a skeptical eyebrow. "The difference being...?"

"It wasn't personal," Jon explains. "I just... I don't know. It was just a weird dynamic, me being your boss."

Martin has to concede that. It still bothers him sometimes when he thinks about it, the words  _ I'm dating my boss _ ringing a dissonant note in his head. "Fair point."

He feels Jon shrug, shoulders shifting against his chest. "Sometimes I think... maybe if we'd just-  _ met. _ If I'd gone and talked to you when you were in the Library, or if you'd found me in Research... or if we'd never worked for the Institute at all. I don't know." His voice goes small, vulnerable in a way that makes Martin's heart ache. "I think we'd have got on."

"Maybe," Martin says, a light, teasing note to his voice to combat the pure emotion in Jon's. "I still think you wouldn't have liked me, though."

"Yes, well," Jon says. "You've also admitted that you have self esteem issues. You literally began our conversation earlier by saying you'd understand if I, your  _ boyfriend, hated _ you."

Martin frowns. He'd thought it was a very reasonable thing to say. "Well I  _ would  _ have-" he begins.

"My point exactly," Jon cuts him off. "So maybe don't be so quick to make assumptions about what I would or wouldn't have felt if we'd met under different circumstances." He says it with finality, like he has already decided on the way it has to be. Martin smiles, just a little.

"If you hadn't been my boss," he says.

"If I hadn't been your boss," Jon echoes.

There's a quiet moment. Jon shuffles his position, settling his head firmly onto Martin's shoulder and slinging an arm across his chest instead of clinging to him like a limpet. Martin lays his own arm alongside it, resting his hand lightly over Jon's elbow and giving it a comforting squeeze.

Jon takes a deep breath. "Even with all that," he says. "You being my assistant, I mean, the whole weird... vendetta against you." Martin snorts at the word choice. "When Prentiss first went after you - when I found out you were in  _ real  _ danger - it hit me hard. I realized how much it would hurt if something happened to you, how much I- I  _ cared, _ about your safety, if not your happiness. That wasn't because of some... pre-existing trauma bond, or something. That was just you."

Martin makes a noncommittal noise. He remembers how much Jon's behavior had changed after the siege on his flat, how he made a conscious effort to cut back on his criticisms of Martin's work. "Caring's a lot different than loving, though," he says.

"I know," Jon concedes. "But... I suppose it's just bothering me, what you said. We didn't spend two years 'becoming compatible' with each other; we spent two years falling in love." He makes a small, unhappy noise. "Or one, at least... I'll admit I wasn't the fairest in my judgment of you before the Prentiss incident. But that was because of the workplace, not because we had some fundamental incompatibility that needed to be sanded away by shared trauma. Hell, if it hadn't been for my paranoia about Gertrude's death we might have gotten together a lot earlier."

"But we only really started bonding  _ after  _ Prentiss," Martin points out.

"Because I only really got to  _ know you _ after Prentiss," Jon insists. "Before that... weird dynamics, again. I was your boss, I wanted to keep things professional between us or- or at least I was trying to. Then we almost died together, and... well, that teaches you a lot about a person."

"But that's what I'm saying," Martin says. He's not sure what part of this Jon isn't getting. "It was that crisis point, sharing that trauma, that pushed us together."

"I mean-" Jon begins. He sounds flustered, and frustrated. "Yes, fine, the shared trauma certainly  _ helped  _ us bond, but it's not the only thing we've got going for us. I'd like to think so, at least."

_ Oh. _

Oh.

Martin softens. "Me too," he says quietly. He still doesn't agree that they would have gotten together without the outside forces pushing them toward each other, but he sees why his argument was bothering Jon. There is so much more to their relationship than shared trauma, and to simplify it into such terms is both inaccurate and hurtful.

"I'd just like to think," Jon says, softly, "that if we'd met under different circumstances... I'd have loved you. It wouldn't be the same as now, but... I'd have loved you, even so."

"Maybe you would have," Martin concedes, equally soft. "Maybe, in another universe, you do."

Jon hums. "Not all of them, though."

"No," Martin says. "Not all of them." They are far from fated to be, and their love is something they have fought for and defended against so many obstacles. It's easy enough to imagine that in some other world, they had given up.

"Other universes aside," Jon says. "We should probably get some sleep in this one."

"Right." Martin does not point out that Jon has been the one keeping them up talking, partly because he doesn't want him to stop. They do need sleep, though. "Goodnight, I guess."

"Goodnight, Martin," Jon says, reaching down to pull up the blanket that has become tangled around their legs. "I love you."

Martin smiles, soft and fond, and takes the edge of the blanket so he can tuck it in around Jon's sides. "I love you too."


End file.
